Craftsmanship in Teaching eBook

present and the future. And along with this,
as they master the principles of science, let them
learn also the human side of science,—­the
story of Newton, withholding his great discovery for
years until he could be absolutely certain that it
was a law; until he could get the very commonplace
but obstreperous moon into harmony with his law of
falling bodies;—­the story of Darwin, with
his twenty-odd years of the most patient and persistent
kind of toil; delving into the most unpromising materials,
reading the driest books, always on the lookout for
the facts that would point the way to the explanation
of species;—­the story of Morse and his bitter
struggle against poverty, and sickness, and innumerable
disappointments up to the time when, in advancing
years, success crowned his efforts.

All this may seem very remote from the prosaic task
of teaching pupils how to study; and yet it will lend
its influence toward the attainment of that end.
For, after all, we must lead our pupils to see that
some books, in spite of their formidable difficulties
and their apparent abstractions, are still close to
life, and that the truth which lies in books, and
which we wish them to assimilate, has been wrought
out of human experience, and not brought down miraculously
from some remote storehouse of wisdom that is accessible
only to the elect. We poke a good deal of fun
at book learning nowadays, and there is a pedantic
type of book learning that certainly deserves all
the ridicule that can be heaped upon it. But
it is not wise to carry satire and ridicule too far
in any direction, and especially when it may mean creating
in young minds a distrust of the force that, more
than any other single factor, has operated to raise
man above the savage.

V

To teach the child the art of study means, then, that
we take every possible occasion to impress upon his
mind the value of study as a means of solving real
and vital problems, and that, with this as an incentive,
we gradually and persistently and systematically lead
him to grasp the method of study as a method,—­that
is, slowly and gradually to abstract the method from
the particular cases to which he applies it and to
emotionalize it,—­to make it an ideal.
Only in this way, so far as we may know, can the art
be so generalized as to find ready application in
his later life. To this end, it is essential that
the steps be taken repeatedly,—­not begun
to-day and never thought of again until next year,—­but
daily, even hourly, insuring a little growth.
This means, too, not only that the teacher must possess
a high degree of patience,—­that first principle
of pedagogic skill,—­but also that he have
a comprehensive grasp of the problem, and the ability
to separate the woods from the trees, so that, to
him at least, the chief aim will never be lost to
view.